Athanasia
by Personality Test
Summary: An endless dance , spinning in a cycle of death and rebirth, like a dream within a dream. AU. Blacksteelshipping.


Disclaimer: Don't own.

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i.

'Almost there, the war is about to end, don't give up, it's nearly over, victory will be ours –'

Those were the words Shirona's repeated, over and over like a mantra, in order to keep pushing forward even with a blindfold on and despair still creeping in like an insidious shadow.

'You've sacrificed too much to just stop, stand and fight, honor your dead comrades –'

The leader says such empty words – how would she know, if she had no family in the first place and sacrifice, sacrifice is just a word with no meaning – and Shirona says the meaningless words again to her dejected soldiers as they charges forward in battle.

_What are you fighting for?_

He asks, the silver-haired boy who doesn't look his age, the steel-eyed boy who isn't fit for war but went through the gutter anyway and lives to never, ever tell the tale, for it is the bloodstained memories that will forever haunt a victim's mind. She realizes that now.

"I don't know." She says uncertainly and he sighs in exasperation. He pulls out a teardrop-shaped necklace and she watches, mesmerized, as it glitters in the sunlight and wonders why it looks so familiar.

_It will protect you._ He says, but his lies are evident and they both know that.

_You won't win_. He says with such grave confidence that her heart shatters and she looks around the barren battlefield with the look of a lost one who could never reach the second star to the right. _But you fight anyway and you lose anyway and you _die _anyway._

She steels her resolve and throws away bitter emotions – love is weakness, because there's no place for love in war and even if she doesn't understand sacrifice, she will, definitely will, because she can move forward and he can't, and she pities him for that.

He disappears as a blood red color penetrates her vision and all fades to black.

_I told you you can't win, but you won't ever run away, will you?  
_

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ii.

Sakurai is leading a good life, that's what everyone says.

At the age of eighteen, she is ready to take the world by storm. A genius, never before seen, invaluable diamond in the rough, she truly is, according to the press and countless magazines with her face plastered on the cover.

_So we're doing this again and again, and I wonder when it will end. Do you know?  
_

The wind hisses something that sounds like a melancholy, but Sakurai doesn't hear it – she's late, late, and she's seen the sakura tree all her life, so many times that she doesn't look back, doesn't see a pair of piercing eyes fixed on her form a long time after the flash of blond disappears in a corner.

_Who has it worse in the end, the wanderer or the one doomed to repeat?_

A phone call arrives and her expression blanches. Next thing she knows, her phone is in pieces and she's left with an entirely new burden on her shoulders.

She tears the paper to shreds and screams in desperation, and her destitution reverberates in the air and spreads for miles and miles. The strong wind blows the pieces away, yet one gets stuck, left behind and the neat, pristine letters laugh in her face.

_I see…it is leukemia this time… But honestly, I'm not quite that surprised. I've seen this before, I think.  
_

Days blur by and he sees her dejected form in a confining white room, and he pities her because she's now just as trapped as he is. Her face is gaunt and she looks like she's just been through a nightmare – she looks like the last Cynthia, he corrected, because their grave expression, in war or in peace, is uncannily alike.

Something buzzes in her ears, but she hears none of it. When they were gone, she slumps down only to straighten up as the door opens.

_Good morning. My name is Steven Stone._

She raises her eyebrows in a quizzical manner, the unvoiced question hangs in the air as she tries to rack her brain, to remember steel-colored eyes and the boy who doesn't look his age.

"Do I know you?"

The answer that comes is light as wind.

_No. No, you don't._

He brings her something new every day – the things she used to see, used to like, used to take for granted. From the wind chime she received from Candice, to the small homemade kaleidoscope she's forgotten about. He's a painful reminder of what she's loved. the things she lost and can never hold again.

Three months pass, and Sakurai no longer looks out the door, because no one ever comes. No one but him.

_You have me, princess. You know that, because you never forgot.  
_

He brings the news of her parent's death in a chilly December evening, and she doesn't blink an eye. He sits on the chair beside her hospital bed, but says nothing as she sings a lullaby - the only one her mother ever taught years ago - when laughs were abundant and the future was unblemished.

The lullaby resounds, and she cringes a little at the familiarity after such a long time.

She finds it hard to stay awake most of the time, and sometimes he shakes her up with frantic eyes and fear evident in his eyes, because she could have died and he would never have the chance to say goodbye.

_You won't win, but you fight anyway and you lose anyway and you die anyway. _He says, and she thinks he's mean because to say it many times is many more bloodstains she suffers and she's sure her heart won't be able to survive the trauma; and then she thinks she's crazy because he obviously had never said this before...has he?

His look at her is unbearably sad in return and she doesn't understand why.

_It's nothing. Nothing at all.  
_

His words haunts her for days and days, until one day it doesn't.

The glass necklace in his hand clinks to the marble floor as the door creaks open and she doesn't wake up.

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iii.

Emily - because she doesn't have a name and it is a name she chooses for herself - walks in an unnamed alley, somewhere in the slums of the world, and she looks upon it with impassive eyes and a perfect poker face.

From her expression, nobody will think she's a mere lost child no different from them, but the rags she wears tell them everything they need to know. She holds her head high like the princess she's supposed to be, and she knows that's what differs her from them.

_Fantastic, princess._

He comes in a cold winter night, when dirtied snow litters the cobbled street and the neverending blizzard cuts into her skin.

"Do I know you?" She asks, because she has a feeling she knows him and her intuition has never failed her.

_No. No, you don't._ He says easily, but his eyes hold doubt and she pities him because he himself doesn't believe in what he is saying.

"What's your name?"

_Steven. Steven Stone._

She likes him.

She doesn't follow him just because he's her ticket out of this hellhole - she does it because she knows she can't help it. He's one of the many things she lost in her life, and she will do anything she can to grab hold onto him.

He gave her a name and gave her freedom, and left her behind as a lost one who does not know what she is supposed to do anymore, and Emily - not Cynthia, it's never Cynthia - loathes him for it.

"I don't need you. I haven't, I never will." Cynthia croaks in the strongest voice she could muster for no one to hear.

She couldn't manage without him after all, and she curses herself for the sheer stupidity of it all. And then, then he comes back, holding out a hand for the despondent child who no longer believes in it.

_I've been looking for you._

"Liar." She says quietly, but the hand doesn't retract and his smile doesn't waver. She reaches her hand up anyway, and is relieved to know that his warmth is not a hallucination, like the Matchstick Girl's false hopes.

"I still won't forgive you." One last stubborn act of a mere child, and Cynthia smiles a little as he pulls her up, because it has truly been so long since she last saw him, and the nostalgia overtakes her.

Three years pass, and she questions why he has that look on his face - the look of someone who has lost everything, a Mad Hatter without his trademark madness to sustain him and keep him from the edge of insanity. He isn't like that person at all, and she feels a little bit guilty for comparing them all the time back then.

She doesn't say a word and he disappears once again soon after - only this time she never sees him again.

He sets a teardrop-shaped necklace on a snow-covered grave, where it glistens in the early sunlight.

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iv.

Camilla is looking for a person she doesn't even know.

She is a little girl, complete with a trademark poofy dress girls are wont to wear. The dress is smudged with dirt every time she returns home after a long day, and her mother chides while grandma smiles a little and the little girl promises not to dirty her dress again.

The dress is stained again the next day, and the cycle repeats again, her mother says with a sigh and cleaned her dress with a bit of sparkly magic she always uses. She wishes she can do that too some day.

_Magic? How peculiar..._

_"_What is 'peculiar'?" Camilla asks in a puzzled tone as the young man smiles and pats her head lightly.

_Something abnormal, but in a good way. Extraordinary._

The young man leads her back home - she can't believe she has gone so far from her house - and leaves before she can memorize his face. The only thing that remains is a color quite like smoke, tinted with blue, and a glass teardrop on a string, and the little girl decides it is quite enough for now.

Camilla trades the too-small poofy dress for a elementary school uniform, complete with plaid skirt and ironed shirt and the sort-of responsibility that comes with growing up.

She learns that magic doesn't always come with iridescent sparkles, magic doesn't always clean her dirty dress, and magic can torture and kill her with a wave of the hand. She doesn't bat an eye.

All of a sudden, she's alone and looking at the charred remains of a used-to-be little home and hearing that there is no survivors, that magic ruined this place and faux-sympathetic people sharing condolences that sounds like annoying buzzing in her ears.

_Do you hate magic now? _He asks as everyone leaves and only she remains.

"Who are you?" Camilla asks impassively.

_Do you hate magic now? _The question repeats and off-handedly she wonders if he is a ghost - they do have the tendency to feed on others' misery.

"No."

_How noble. Extraordinary, even. _

At the word, something rose from the depths of memories and she turns around to the color of smoke tinted with blue.

"Do I know you?"

_No. No, you don't._ "I don't believe you." She cuts him off before he finishes his sentence, but the reply is just a sad smile before he disappears completely.

_You never do. Always the stubborn one.  
_

He appears again when she's about to collapse from the strain she's brought on herself after fighting for so, so long, and brings her to the hospital with a frightened look on his face. Blurred as her mind is, she doesn't understand why he didn't just teleport. He can teleport; why did he choose not to?

A few days later, she prompts the questions and he answers, light as wind, that he has never known magic all his life, and science is naught but a blur in his mind. She is shocked, but says nothing, and as he teleports away she holds on to his hand, because there is simply no way he doesn't know magic, it's impossible.

_What are you fighting for?_

_I don't know._

_What's your name?_

_Steven. Steven Stone._

_It's nothing. Nothing at all._

The swirl of colors disappears, but the damage has already been done. She teleports away, and the last thing she sees is the shocked expression on his face.

"Well hello there, Mister Time-Traveller." Camilla says in the most spiteful voice she can manage, a few hours after her return - the shock, the anger is still very present.

_What did you see? _The light smile is still plastered on his face, but she can tell he didn't quite manage it.

"Enough to understand. Why did you save me?" He wasn't supposed to that day many years ago. She was supposed to get lost. She was supposed to die. And now her family are dead and it is his fault.

No answer.

Camilla waves her hand and the door blasts open with a loud bang; but before she can inflict any damage, he disappears, just as a wanderer like him is supposed to do.

Years pass, and he - it's Steven, she doesn't want to remember because _they_ are one and the same - returns again to a carnage wrought upon by her own bloodied hands, and this time he can't disappear quickly enough. The curse slashes through the all too familiar _ridiculous_ suit - because seriously, purple didn't go with his eyes, she tried to tell him all the time - instead of her family's murderer, and stains it red as he falls and she realizes what she has done.

A sharp pain erupts behind her back, and Camilla almost welcomes the comforting darkness that lies ahead.

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A little girl with blond knee-length hair and a pretty white dress runs as fast as she can, yet still is careful so as not to dirty the hem of the pure white dress.

"Steven! Steven, look! It's the dress papa bought for me!" She shouted, and even though the boy behind the book flinches a little at the noise, he smiles widely and greet her like how he always does, steely eyes twinkling with happiness.

"So papa has just come back home and he brought me a lot of presents, see? He says you might want some stones for your collection, too, so he gave me lots! Aren't they beautiful, Steven?" He nods in that quiet way, but that is all the little girl need as she smiles brilliantly and he smiles back, like how children ought to be.

Among the lovely accessories left on the perch, one glass pendant stands out, glittering in the sunlight. A hand draws close, almost touching, but retracts and disappears.

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A/N: Um. Okay. So...I don't know what that was about either. Feel free to interpret it anyway you like (I've heard at least three different opinions already, and I'm sure there are a lot more - fanfiction is crazy that way). And now I need to log off because I'm cold, my homework is piling up and my nose is so clogged up I'm going to suffocate anytime soon. Oh well.


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